12
MORGAIN
A sense of motion stirred Morgain from her tormented stupor. In nightmare-haunted delirium she slowly awoke to a feeling of vertigo, unable at once to distinguish her surroundings from the lingering phantoms of monstrous dream. In this world of living nightmare, the task was not that simple.
Pain. Black, spinning pain…
Pain was a focus of reality for her. Morgain wondered dully about the pain, and tumbling images of memory came back to her.
***
Morgain remembered awakening to horror that last night in her chamber in Baal-dor. Vaguely glimpsed dwarfish shapes had torn her from her bed. There had been no warning, though Morgain slept fight as a cat. For a confused instant she thought her own people had set upon her. Then the glow of her lamp showed the cadaverous-thin, leprous-hued bodies-too stunted even for Picts.
Their faces…
Morgain had opened her mouth to scream. A wad of rag was stuffed into her throat instead, almost choking her. Struggling and clawing with desperate strength, the girl could not break away from the cold hands that gripped her. In a brief, silently fought struggle, the outraged girl’s wrists and ankles were securely bound with leather thongs, her gag tied tightly in place, and a blindfold strapped over her eyes.
The last was a mercy of sorts. Morgain retained only a chaotic remembrance of being hauled through the misty night, brutally dragged through dank tunnels and passageways that seemed to go on forever. Blind and mute, the girl could nonetheless hear the hideous sibilant cries of her captors. On a thousand nights Morgain had shivered beside the hearth, listening to lurid tales of the Children of the Night and of young maids who strayed too far from their home-fires. Her thoughts as she felt her bound body pulled through narrow passages of clinging earth were not pleasant ones.
At length her captors had halted, and Morgain was allowed to lie sprawled across a surface of cold stone. She had tried to struggle against her bonds, until several harsh kicks to her belly discouraged her efforts. Half in shock, the girl lay there… the loathsome voices of the serpent-folk telling her she was not alone.
Eventually rough hands pulled away her blindfold. Wild-eyed, Morgain had stared about her. To her utter amazement, her vision focused on two people she, at first, thought to be human. For a moment her mind grappled with the mystery of this man and woman who stood looking down upon her, here in the hidden caverns of the Worms of the Earth.
The woman was beautiful, in a repellent sort of way. Morgain watched her sway toward her, and thought of the jewel-scaled grace of a gliding serpent. A closer scrutiny caught the subtly pointed ears, the oblique yellow eyes. Bran had told her somewhat of his ill-fated quest for the Black Stone.
The woman knelt over her, untied her gag. Morgain spat out the choking ball of rag. “You’re Atla?” she queried, speaking with difficulty.
The witch arched her brows. “Do you know me then, girl? Has your brother been one to boast to you of his mistresses? I’d thought better of so bold a lover!”
“Bran has told me some things of you,” Morgain returned with forced coolness. “Do you now sleep with Romans?”
Atla slapped her-stingingly, with casual cruelty. “Speak softly, girl! Or I’ll regret removing your gag.”
“Remove my bonds, and then try to strike me!” snarled Morgain through bleeding lips.
Atla smiled with deadly malice and drew back her hand.
“Leave her alone,” snapped the Roman. “The girl shows fine courage. I like that.”
“Who are you to command me, Claudius Nero!” hissed Atla, turning on him.
The other only touched his swordhilt. “You are not indispensable to our plans, Atla.”
He spoke the Pictish tongue haltingly, slurring its sibilants in an unpleasant manner. His meaning, however, was clear enough to Atla. Angrily she drew back from the girl.
Ignoring the witch, Morgain studied the Roman. The light was poor, only a flaring cresset which did not define the limits of the cavern. Beyond the pool of light, Morgain glimpsed sidelong the wavering yellow glimmer of countless pairs of eyes. It was better to look at the Roman.
Of the man called Claudius Nero, she could discern very little. He wore the garb and armor of a Roman officer, a rich woolen cloak offsetting his thin shoulders. The man was no taller than her brother, and lacked Bran’s compact bulk. A pointed chin and narrow face with high forehead were masked by shadow. His eyes had that same subtle slant and yellowish glint that at first made the girl suspect kinship to Atla-though she had not yet grasped the nature of that kinship.
Morgain did not like the way Claudius Nero stared down at her. It suddenly made her aware that the thin shift she had worn to bed was badly ripped and pulled high upon her hips. Her belly coldly tense, the girl wriggled on the stone in an effort to slide the torn garment lower on her thighs.
Atla laughed spitefully.
“What does this mean, Roman?” Morgain demanded with a new flash of anger. “My brother will feed you with bits of your roasted entrails while I watch you die!”
“Your brother will do nothing except as we command,” Nero said evenly. “Or well send him your flayed skin as remembrance.”
“Fool! Am I to be hostage? Bran Mak Morn will make a truce with Rome when wolves become shepherds!”
Nero laughed, gestured about him. “Morgain, you are not in Rome. And be sure that I am no Roman.”
The girl groped for understanding-dreading to acknowledge that which she suspected. Claudius Nero knelt beside her, taking her chin in his thin hands and lifting her face to his. Defiantly Morgain glared back at him-for the first time she saw clearly the pointed ears and sharp-fanged mocking smile, the fine-grained, mottled texture of his skin…
And now Morgain understood what blood-ties Atla and Claudius Nero shared in common.
Nero seemed not wholly pleased with the flash of dread he had provoked in Morgain’s eyes. He rose fluidly to his feet, letting her slump back to the stone.
“You are my hostage,” he told her curtly. “As hostage, you shall not be harmed. That is, so long as Bran Mak Morn undertakes to cooperate with us. If your brother proves stubborn, I assure you your death will not come half so swiftly as you would wish.”
Nero gave commands in the repellent sibilants of the serpent-folk. Morgain tried to repress a shudder as the stunted vermin slunk into the circle of light.
Their misshapen, dwarfish bodies were hideous in their nakedness. They carried their snaky heads bobbing forward on sinewy necks as they shambled in a travesty of human gait-creatures whose degenerate pride was to walk, in defiance of a resurgent heritage that bade them crawl on their bellies. They were no larger than children, though their stunted limbs belied their bulk. Tiny scales of leprous and mottled hue made shapeless blotches over their distorted bodies. Beneath strangely flattened foreheads, unwinking yellow eyes gleamed with ophidian evil. Pendulous hps like wattles writhed over curved serpentine fangs in jaws that seemed curiously articulated.
Child-like hands, cold and tense as chilled steel, clawed at her ankles. Morgain bit down her rising nausea, shrinking from that contact. But they only meant to untie the thongs about her ankles.
Nero stepped forward, gripped her shoulders in a touch no less repugnant, hauled the girl to her feet with a strength Morgain had not suspected he possessed.
“Come with me,” he ordered. “It will be better for you if you walk. If not-as you will.”